Jessica Pickens, 19, of Chicago, stands with fellow voting rights activists outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, the day the court struck down key portions of the law.

The logical foundation of the Supreme Court's decision Tuesday to strike down a key pillar of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 may well be solid. Base the law on current information and not on what happened 40 years ago, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.

But the end of a law by a 5-4 vote that was a key tenet of the civil rights movement is worrisome.

Tendencies toward discrimination are never far beneath the surface in this country, and the progress the nation has made is due in no small measure to the Voting Rights Act. What will happen now that the law has been gutted is anyone's guess.

That's why the federal protections afforded by that law must be re-established quickly by Congress

"The great man who led the march from Selma to Montgomery and there called for the passage of the Voting Rights Act foresaw progress, even in Alabama," said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who read her dissent from the bench. "'The arc of the moral universe is long,' he said, but 'it bends toward justice,' if there is a steadfast commitment to see the task through to completion."

We agree, and we urge Congress to follow the advice of President Barack Obama, who called on lawmakers "to pass legislation to ensure every American has equal access to the polls." But with gaping political divides in Congress and in the nation generally, there is no reason for optimism that lawmakers will do so. This is a group can barely pass a budget, let alone deal with an issue as complicated and politically combustible as voting rights.

The court's majority ruled that Congress had not justified continuing to subject nine states, most of them Southern, to federal oversight of voting. Because of a long history of racial discrimination, those states, as well as certain localities in others, were required to receive "preclearance" from the Justice Department before changing voting laws.

Congress could still try to impose federal oversight on them but not without fresh data, the court decided. The law is "based on 40-year-old facts having no relationship to the present day," Roberts wrote. Congress "must identify those jurisdictions to be singled out on a basis that makes sense in light of current conditions. It cannot simply rely on the past."

The chief justice believes times have changed, noting black voter turnout in the South was only 6.4% in Mississippi when the law was enacted and that in the most recent election, African-American voter turnout exceeded white turnout in five of the six states.

Yes, that is certainly progress. But we're far less confident that current conditions will continue than the chief justice is. Even in a good government Northern state such as Wisconsin, there have been nefarious attempts to limit voting to the benefit of one political party. Voter ID laws here and elsewhere are intended to tamp down the vote in minority communities — not to eradicate voter fraud, which is so sparse as to be non-existent. The real fraud is the logic behind these laws. And in a variety of states, from Texas to Illinois to Wisconsin, politicians have carved up districts to ensure their own parties prevail — but with the effect of diluting the vote.

Rick Pildes, an elections law expert at New York University, told The Washington Post that he worries that Section 5 of the law — now invalidated — has kept local communities from designing harmful regulations and that without the protections afforded by oversight, local governments might try to make it harder for disadvantaged groups to vote. He's right to be worried about that, although he also notes that laws at the local and national level can be used to fight such mischief. Even so, the concern that past could be prologue is legitimate.

Congress last renewed the act in 2006, basing its decision on data from decades ago. That bill passed with bipartisan majorities and was signed into law by Republican President George W. Bush. Congress now needs to revisit this important issue.

We're glad that Chief Justice Roberts can see so clearly into the future. We cannot. We'd rather learn from the past.

What is your view of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965? To be considered for publication as a letter to the editor, e-mail your opinion to the Journal Sentinel editorial department